When you start working with a search engine marketing firm, most will be forthcoming with their strategy and tactics for improving your natural search engine listings. But what should you do, if the firm stops providing you with a clear outline of the steps they are taking on your behalf?...

If you spend enough time looking at what bloggers (covering your industry) have to say, you ll be able to spot future trends that can help you adapt your search marketing campaign now, before the data starts showing up in your competitor s Wordtracker report....

As part of Andy Beal's continuing look at "the future of search technology", Andy had a chance to ask Arnaud Fischer, previously AltaVista product manager from 1999-2001 and currently leading search product planning for InfoSpace's Search & Directory division, some questions about how local search will develop in the future....

Eurekster makes use of its own SearchMemory™ technology which remembers the sites a user finds useful and presents them higher in the results the next time they search. Then, Eurekster lets a user and their friends share their searches and sites, so when they do a "hotel" search, for example, they'll see the hotel sites their friends also found useful, moved up in the results and marked with an icon....

Anyone connected with the search engine industry probably shares my excitement that the future holds some great advances in technology. While the spotlight may currently be on Google, Yahoo and MSN, Ask Jeeves has quietly improved their search engine to ensure a user experience that is second-to-none....

For Internet searches, I see social behavior analysis tools like Technorati becoming far more important. Why? Because people want different ways to see potentially relevant results. I also see that search engines that search just specific types of content (like Feedster) are going to be more important....

Instead of looking at what will happen this year, perhaps we should look at what must happen in the search engine space if Google, Yahoo and MSN are truly able to revolutionize search and enhance the user experience....

Remember the user experience. While your SEO efforts will help improve your search engine rankings, don't sacrifice the usability of your web site. Ensure that it is easy to navigate and that all of your keyword-rich text still makes sense to the average visitor....

Lycos has listened to feedback from search engine marketers and, with this re-launch, hopes to steal a significant share of the paid inclusion market. I recently sat down with Adam Soroca, group product manager for Lycos InSite and took a look at the revamped service....

The most important topic of the day for any search engine marketer had to be Converting Visitors into Buyers. While some marketers concentrate on simply obtaining top rankings in search engines, those more experienced SEM’s know the importance of actually converting that valuable traffic. An impressive panel of speakers provided the audience with ideas and solutions to increase a website’s conversion ratio....

Day 3 of Search Engine Strategies, San Jose included a wide range of sessions covering broad topics such as 'Meet the Crawlers' and the more targeted 'Google API'. However, there was not an empty seat available when Danny Sullivan sat down with Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, on the eve of his 30th birthday, to chat about the past and future of the world’s most famous search engine....

Day Two of Search Engine Strategies, San Jose promised to step up the pace with the offering of three separate itineraries for search engine marketers to choose from. While many attendees were recovering from the Google Dance the night before, they soon got down to business when Danny Sullivan took to the podium....

Day One of the conference had been designated as a 'pre-conference' day with the sessions taking on two distinct tracts. Danny had decided to move all the beginners SEM sessions to this day and additionally take the opportunity to provide an annual update on the economics of the search engine industry....

While Christmas may well seem like a long way off, search engine marketing contains a lot of research, implementation and patience (as you wait for search engines to spider and index your site). By starting your search engine campaign in August, you hopefully won't need my last-minute articles come November....

So now that you’ve started to optimize your website, how do you make sure it reaches its target audience? No doubt, you can name the most important search engines and I would hazard a guess that you could name many of the smaller ones too. Which ones are important and how should you submit to them? Let’s take a look....

As part of the continued series 'Getting Back To Search Engine Optimization Basics', Andy Beal takes a closer look at Meta description and Meta keywords tags. Do you still need them and what benefits do they bring?...

Not only is the structure and content of the Title tag used by the search engines when calculating your webpage's relevance, but it is also displayed in most search engine results pages. It therefore needs to be carefully constructed in such a way that it influences your website's position in the SERP, but is also attractive enough to encourage a surfer to click on your link....

If your company hasn’t already made plans to make the most of this years predicted, recording breaking Internet growth, then it may be too late. Most of your competitors have already implemented some kind of search engine strategy and are one step ahead. So what can you do?...

Using doorway pages to enhance the search engine ranking of your website, will not benefit your company in the long-term. While it is tempting to use doorways to gain quick results, inevitably the search engines discover the pages and ban them from their index....

You probably know that META tags are important for search engine optimization and that they need to be included on your Web site. But what exactly do they do? What is their purpose and how exactly do the search engines interact with them?...

Back when your site wallowed in search engine obscurity, none of your competitors worried about who you were, or what you did. But your rapid rise to the top of the search engine results has stirred the vipers' nest -- and now, your competitors are rattled! You can bet your life they'll come after you with a vengeance....

Generic terms do indeed receive a lot of search requests each month, but they also have the lowest sales conversion rate. That's because search engine users are becoming more Net savvy and know that they need to be more specific with their keyword searches....

When first setting up a business, most people will register a domain name that mirrors exactly the name of their company. While this is certainly important for directing people to your Web site, many Web site owners do not realize that a good domain name can help with their search engine ranking....

If you own a web site, you have no doubt tried various methods to promote your business. Unfortunately, as you may well have discovered, few approaches provide sufficient return on investment. So, as a frustrated online business owner, what is the answer?...

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